Page 4 of Wanted You More

I still don’t want to know where he got all that, since he doesn’t have a dog.

My best friend bats her lashes at me, but I don’t buy her innocence at all. “It’s probably better you don’t know.”

Making a face, I lean back with a loud sigh as we drive toward the back entrance, where a lot of the staff go in and out. It’s basically like a servant’s quarters, so the rich people don’t have to associate with them beyond saying “yes” to a refill of their sparkling waters. “If you didn’t want me to know anything, you probably shouldn’t have brought me here, dum-dum.”

“I want you to see her face.”

“Marybelle—”

“It’s too late, babes. Judd is already here and doing what I told him, so you’ll just have to sit back and say ‘thank you’ when we get a front row seat of the horror show.”

I blink slowly. “This isn’t going to be aCarriemoment, is it? Because you know how I feel about blood.”

The thought makes me queasy to my stomach as I toy with the fringes hanging off my crop top. It looks like one of those tasseled cowboy jackets, which I paired with an old pair of cowboy boots that I found in Mom’s old closet. I think she wore them in her pageant days, so wearing them makes me feel close to her. When Dad first saw me wear them, he’d gotten quiet before saying, “They look good on you, kiddo.”

“Chill, there’s no blood involved.”

Sitting back, I watch warily through the windshield as we pull up next to a beat-up pickup truck that I know belongs to Judd Watson. Unlike Marybelle, who grins ear to ear as she puts the car in park and unbuckles, I stay plastered to my seat. My stomach tightens when I see the number of expensive cars in the members’ lot, telling me there are a ton of people inside about to witness whatever the psycho beside me has up her nonexistent sleeve.

My best friend adjusts her boobs in the tiny top that barely covers her large chest before cracking open the door. “You sure you don’t want to come with? I’m doing this for you.”

That’s only partly the truth, and we both know it. Cheyanne and a few of her friends who are bound to be inside spread a rumor about Marybelle being a lesbian. The guy she’d been crushing on stopped talking to her, and she’s never forgiven any of the girls involved.

I pull out my phone from where I tucked it under my thigh. “I’m fine here where it’s safe. Try not to get in too much trouble.”

She shoots me a wink and says, “If I do, I’ll shove Judd under the bus and run like hell.”

My eyes go down to the heeled sandals she’s wearing. “Good luck with that.”

Sticking her tongue out at me, she slides out and shuts the door with one final wave before disappearing, where Judd is sticking his head out of a side door of the building. How he got in there, I don’t want to know. I know he has unusual skills involving picking locks and breaking and entering, taught to him by his father, who is in jail for the same things.

Trying to distract myself by scrolling through social media on my phone, I giggle at a few funny memes I save and send to my brother, knowing he’ll laugh too. He tried getting me to stay in tonight with bribery of my favorite triple chocolate brownie from the vegan pastry shop on Main Street. Out of all the colorful, welcoming buildings that attract tourists with their fun signs and bright flags, Queenie’s Pastries is my favorite. Not only because they give me the middle piece every time, but because they let me sneak into the back at the end of the day and listen to Queenie herself tell me stories from her years traveling the world.

I’m smiling at my brother’s reply to the pictures I sent when I hear something that pulls my attention upward. The front doors of the club open, and a crowd of people rush out, all yelling something with their arms over their faces.

The scene makes my heart hammer. And before I can stop it, my mind pulls me back tothatday. I get out of Marybelle’s car and run in the opposite direction of everybody else with one thought in the forefront of my mind.

Make it to safety.

My feet propel me faster and faster until I’m at the edge of the property that’s surrounded by old stone walls that must be at least a century old. I climb over a broken section of the wall to hide behind the stacks of stones, tucking my knees against my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I try being quiet, remembering how important that was before.

It’d been hard to breathe.

Hard not to cry.

It was good I passed out under the weight of the man who had saved me. The two people responsible for every single one of my nightmares thought I was dead too, because I lay in a pool of blood that mostly wasn’t my own.

I can still feel the stickiness coating my skin—wet, thick, and smelling heavily of iron.

To this day, I can’t wear red, and the sight of blood…

Cowering into myself when I hear sirens coming from a distance, I try doing what my old counselor advised me to and count backward from ten. My chest tightens despite the effort to flood air inside it. I know I’m moments away from a full-blown panic attack, and the last time that happened, I hyperventilated and nearly passed out.

The pesky voice in my head keeps telling me to run as the sirens get closer and closer, but instead of listening, I hold myself tighter. The stonewall is a perfect block against the breeze coming in from the lake and the noise happening behind me that’s starting to quiet down, but it doesn’t stop me from shivering anyway. Especially when my brain pulls me right back tothen.

“We’ve got another one,” someone yells from far away. I’m being rolled over and pulled away. Hands are on me. Lots of hands. I don’t know who they belong to.

Mommy?

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